Fearless (The Blue Fire Saga) (10 page)

Now
it was time to
finally
dig into Dominic’s
book
of magic
.

She sat back down on the bed beside Rave and picked up the book.
Resting it
on her lap, she opened
it and began
thumbing carefully through the pages
. The first spell was the plant growth
one, so she moved past it
. The second was the air shield, a very difficult spell she had tried unsuccessfully a few times with Dominic. The wizard said he had ordered the spells in the book by ease of learning and usefulness. The air shield thing definitely failed the easy test, but she guessed Dominic had placed it second because she had already tried it. She decided she would give it another try or two today, but first she wanted to try something new and easier, so the flipped the page to the third spell.

This one
was an illumination spell, used primarily for lighting one’s way in the dark, but
with a notation that used at
full power, it could be employed to distract
and even repel
light sensitive creatures such as vampires. Leesa read the page carefully
several times
, making sure to miss no detail. When she was certain she understood the spell and its incantation completely, she closed the book.

“
So, w
hat’s next?” Rave asked.

“
An illumination spell
. I need a visual
first, though
. Could you grab that candle from my desk, please?” She pointed to a thick red candle sitting on the corner of her desk.

Leesa had been tempted to try to bring the candle to her by telekinesis, but she had no visual for the candle floating across the room and didn’t want to risk a failure experience before trying her new spell.

Rave got up and crossed to the desk. He picked up the candle.

“There are some matches in the drawer,” Leesa told him.

Rave grinned and p
laced his index finger
softly against the blackened wick. A small blue flame
flickered from his fingertip and igni
ted the candle, which burned with the same blue flame.

“
Ha!
Very nice,” Leesa said, smiling. “But that’s not really what I need.”

Rave feigned a pout.
“What, you have something against blue fire?”

“
You know I love blue fire—it
’s the visual I use to keep warm in the cold,
remember?
Blue fire in my belly?
But I don’t think the illumination spell is a
bout magical blue light.” Leesa
thought for a moment, wondering if she could adapt the spell to blue. She loved the idea—it would be very cool to be
able to create a light that matched Rave’s fire. She pushed the thought aside. Maybe when she got more skilled at magic she would be able to do it. For now, she knew she had better stick to the way the spell was described in the book.

“I need yellow light
, not blue,” she told Rave
. “Sorry.”

Raved moved across the room and sat down beside Leesa.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It doesn’t stay blue. Look.”

Rave held the candle out in front of Leesa. Already, the flame was a flickering golden yellow.

“
That’s better,” Leesa said. “
Dral
, could you close the curtains
, please. I want it to be darker in here.”

Dral
pulled the curtains closed in the window near the door and then crossed to the back window and did the same. Some afternoon light still filtered in through the material, but the room was now very dim, if not
completely
dark. Dim was all Leesa needed.

She didn’t look directly at the candle flame. Instead, she concentrated on the way the candle lit up the area around it. According to the book, the spell would produce a glowing orb, not a flame. Since she didn’t have an orb available, she had decided to try candlelight.

After about two minutes of studying the light
, she thought she was ready for her first try. She held out her hand, palm up.

“
Illuminati
verdus
,” she said.

Nothing happened.

“
Illuminati
verdus
,” she repeated, a bit more loudly. The result was the same.

“Rave, blow out the candle
, please
.
”

Leesa hoped that trying the spell in deeper dimness, without the distraction of the flickering candlelight might help, but several more attempts produced no light. She was disappointed, but reminded herself failure was the normal result at the beginning, even when she was working with Dominic. On her own, she had to be ready to accept even more failure.
Even so, she was not ready to give up just yet. She wondered if a different visual might help. An idea came to her.

She got up and limped over to her dresser.

“Rave, would you bring the candle over here?” she asked.

Rave did as she requested.
By the light of the candle, she unscrewed and removed the lampshade from the small lamp on the dresser. She was going to try using the unshielded light bulb for her visual, and she wanted to see the bulb light up. When the shade was off, she turned toward Rave and blew out the candle.
The room became very dim.

Keeping her eyes on the bulb, she switched on the light. The sudden brightness caused her to blink, but she kept her eyes fastened on the bulb, letting its bright glow imprint itself on her retinas. When she
felt she was ready, she turned off the light and held out her palm again.

“
Illuminati
verdus
,” she said.
“
Illuminati
verdus
.”

With the afterimage of the light bulb still on her eyes, Leesa couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw a very faint glow appear and quickly disappear just above her hand.

“Did you see anything?” she asked Rave
hopefully
. “Or did I just imagine it.”

Rave smiled.
“If you mean that little flick
er of light above your palm, yeah,
I saw it. It was real—you didn’t imagine it.
”

A surge of elation passed through Leesa. She had done it! The light hadn’t been very bright, and it had disap
peared almost as soon as it
appeared, but she had created light out of nowhere. Now that she knew she could do it, all she had to do was practice and practice, until she could do it as well as she could do the plant growth spell or telekinesis.

“Awesome!” she said. “Give me a minute. I’m going to try it again.”

She closed her eyes, waiting until the afterimage of the light bulb was completely gone.

“Let’s sit,”
she said when she opened her eyes.

She and Rave returned to the bed. Leesa sat down on the edge and held her palm out once more.

“
Illuminati
verdus
,” she chanted.

This time, she was positive she saw a little yellow ball of light
, no bigger than a marble
. It didn’t last
much longer than the first one and it
didn’t really light up the
room at all,
but she didn’t care. Totally excited, she decided she would forget about the air
shield spell for today and
spend
the rest of the hour—and maybe a
little
bit more—working on this spell.

So
that’s exactly what she did. By the time she called it quits, she was creating glowing yellow orbs the size of a golf ball that lasted almost
a full second
before winking out. The tiny lig
hts were of no practical use
, but she was confident her skill would grow with practice. She had to warn herself not to let her enthusiasm run away with her. She knew from past experience there would be plenty of frustration and failures in the coming days. Still, she was proud of what she had accomplished today.

6. AWAKENING

K
risti
Brolen’s
eyelids fluttered open. As her vision slowly came into focus, she found herself looking up into the bare, tangled branches of tall trees. Through the
leafless branches, she could see piece
s of blue sky. It took her a moment to realize she was lying on her back on the ground. She had no memo
ry of how she had gotten here. As a matter of fact, she suddenly realized, s
he had no memory of anything, not even her name.

She tried to turn her head, but found she could not. Her arms and legs seemed paralyzed as well. She was able to move her eyes from side to side, but that was it. Even her mouth was frozen shut. There would be no calling out for help, or even screaming
in fear or frustration
. Strangely, none of this bothered her.

Her clothes we
re wet, but she did not feel the
cold, even though she could see small p
atches of snow on the ground
around her out
of the corner of her eyes and knew it must be winter. This did not bother her either.

Kristi
had no way of knowing she had been bitten by
a vampire nearly two months before
and had been lying here ever since, close to death, yet not
truly dying
.
Had she been able to touch her throat, she would have felt the twin puncture marks. The vampire who had taken her—a female named Candice—had been young and inexperienced. In her
Destiratu
-driven hunger, Candice had taken Kristi too close to the edge of becoming vampire before her more experienced companions pulled her away. The coven was already full, so its members were forbidden to turn any more
victims into
vampires.

Instead, one of them
had carried Kristi
to a hidden, secluded spot
deep
in the woods and left
her
there, hanging on the boundary between dead and undead.
Unless something changed, she w
ould lie there like that forever. Luckily for Kristi, she knew none of this. Sh
e simply stared
vacantly
up into the sky for awhile and then let her eyelids fall closed again.